Tag: #lifeinyourownway

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The Simple Things and On Writing

Hi. I can’t remember the last time I said hi and meant it in the way I’m thinking of now. Actually I can.

I just read a passage in Stephen King’s On Writing that has inspired this post. Page 56. When you write a story, you are telling yourself the story, he said. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.“ Gould said some thing else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: “right with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.”

I made a promise to myself that I will finish this book from cover to cover before the end of the year. It feels like a good goal. A few years back I read the first half, and it felt so sacred and emotional, that I could not bring myself to allow it to be over. Or at least that’s the story I tell. Also I couldn’t focus on one thing at a time or move slowly.

I am relieved these days that I can be still. I had a spiritual experience this morning. The weather is beautiful and I just sat in my living room looking around and the abundance I have created. I had everything I ever set out to do right under my nose the whole time. People tried to tell me this so bad often, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my pain. Or to let it let go of me.

When I slow down and comb through my life I have so many things I didn’t even pay attention to. I was amassing and moving more quickly than I could appreciate. Now I am slowing down and looking through the piles and boxes and dark corners and making new discoveries all the time.

Like this mornings which was a video by Esther Perel on listening. Esther Perel on Listening there were several gems in this. My favorite aspect of it is her owning mistakes as a counselor. I believe in this, but hadn’t yet found the courage to do so. She helps me. We learn more from our mistakes and it also helped me with some work I’ve done recently.

This afternoon between driving one of my twins to her job (we are down a vehicle currently) a pending ski trip motivated some closet cleaning. Amidst some of that were maternity clothes new and still in the bags, as well as many sentimental artifacts from 2019 until now.

The last time I did the first round of this cleaning I thought the emotions would kill me. It’s refreshing to see that this time I’m able to do it, feelings still in tow, but with a lot more acceptance.

The gift I have received from all of this darkness is presence. In the Esther video I referenced above she talks about languishing and about how the opposite is eroticism. Of course that caught my interest. The things that make us feel the most alive. The most present for the sensations. I recalled a time on the beach when I had met a lover I was quarreling with. We could not communicate or come to any understanding. So I requested we sit at the beach together, but not be allowed to say a word.

Now I can appreciate this creativity and effort so much different than I did then. I still remember that day fondly. Today as I was thinking of it I was thinking about eyes closed and just feeling what sand flowing through your fingers feels like. Whether it’s cool or hot, lumpy or smooth, moist or dry. The full sensory experience and how if you tune out the world and tune into the sensations, we are capable of the miraculous, without any cost, …. So simple.

I think of how my traumatized mind made simple things more complicated as my mind jumped to every possible scenario the very epitome of anxiety.

I think of how any trip I embarked upon was riddled with intrusive thoughts of bad things happening, and how I never understood why my mind did that, and worse, I felt defective, crazy, or bad. I shrank inside myself to try and make sure that didn’t infect anyone else.

I tried to protect others from even the possibility of becoming something “bad”, and I have a lot of appreciation for the things I did to adapt, and those that I faced.

I’m making a tender and soft self to operate from these days. Presence and intentionality. If I take a day or two to think about things I’ll usually see how I feel and what I need to do with so much more clarity than I ever was afforded before.

My ego runs the show so much less. It’s not nearly as fragile. I say I’m sorry and thank you for reminding me, and don’t have expectations for my children I couldn’t even keep up with when no one is looking. They truly are my greatest teachers. The work I’m most interested now is working on my listening and doing research around this.

After almost a year of horrible family therapy, now that I see what a good relationship really looks like, with a committed therapist, it’s a true game changer. I was so vulnerable I didn’t even know it shouldn’t have been like that. And I’m a therapist!!! We can’t see ourselves no matter how smart and aware, and vulnerability and grief changes the whole game. I wish I knew this sooner, but I’m glad I do now.

I appreciate Esther and Stephen’s company and guidance today. Fast friends. For now I’m going to listen to some old school Eminem and finish cleaning out my closet.

Merry Holidays Everyone. Life can be anything you want it to, if you’re committed and consistent.

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Healing Can Bring About Some of the Most Brilliant Light

This feels like a nice moment to blog. I finished Saturday sessions. Hadn’t eaten so I made some chicken, rice, and broccoli. Had to throw in a veggie for good measure. Chicken and rice is universally my favorite dish I think or with mashed potatoes etc. the most likely to be digested properly meal for me. Simple and I love it.

It’s a dreary day. I see these as more external encouragement for relaxation. Last night I hung out with a couple of good friends and watched 10 Things I Hate about you. Collectively we are all going through heartbreak and helping one another. I never expected to find that, but here it is: everyone doing a part in easing the others burden, caring for one another. I never imagined to find all these sources scattered about it in moderation versus all or nothing.

Basically that’s what all of my work right now is about. Battling addiction I suppose. Also coming to terms with how we tell stories to ourselves to be able to deal with things, and I think that’s why I developed the habit of trying to throw as many true words out of me as possible so I would be forced to stay in the truth even when scared, because I prefer to live that way, even when it’s hard.

I suppose I learned that from the writing of Paulo Coehlo first, or at least to notice and value it. I remember reading his works and listening to them while stocking produce at Trader Joe’s.

What I’m overwhelmed about the most these days is something I referred to as “the crushing weight of possibility”, in my energy healing yesterday. Shifting from a scarcity program to an abundance mindset, as it turns out, is not for the faint of heart.

My energy healer Julie worked on my kidney Meridian, which unsurprisingly corresponds to fear, anxiety, feeling inadequate, etc. she said it was very blocked the first pass over, the second moved nicely. She asked me about my experience with the healing, and my first feedback was that I can receive so much more readily. And sure enough there are people seeing me, thinking of me, sending me things, helping my own work of seeing myself as worthy and deserving.

I feel comforted, held, seen, and am now willing to accept that expecting that entirely from one primary partner was not only unrealistic, but not good for either person involved. I’m learning.

This does not mean I’m not lonely or have hard days. I do often. It does however mean that doesn’t send me in a panic upon which I feel I’ll never recover, and dear God I deserve that break from my own pained mind.

I have long stood in my own way and made life way harder than it ever had to be. Takes one to know one, because that’s what I knew, what I felt I deserved, and was mirroring the relationship I had with myself.

I have clients who have put in five plus years of work and I’m watching them transform before my very eyes. For complex ptsd there’s no such thing as solution focused therapy in my opinion. That would grossly underestimate the level of suffering they have endured. That doesn’t mean good therapy can’t work quickly, but it takes a lot of repetition to lay down habits, and to pull the old ones up. Challenging long held beliefs is tricky business, especially when life is already so demanding on its own.

I’m getting sleepy. I anticipate more writing in the coming days as theories and thoughts keep circling back around to see if I’m ready to contract a creative process with them.

In my energy healing what she heard was The mind is not God. Separating myself from my thinking realizing they are different. Not needing to rely on my mind or fear my scattered mind. And that because I’ve been working at such a deep level such a long time that’s how rich essentially my life will be. It has enriched my work, my relationships with others, and my day to day life, and for that I am tremendously grateful.

Some things I’m grateful for: helping new friends make their new lonely spaces feel homey and less alone, bonding with people who I share trauma with, good food, people thinking of things I would like or that make me happy or comfortable, my Christmas Tree, cozy things, having enough money to buy the people I love gifts, having enough money to do improvements on my home. My continuing efforts at reducing overwhelm and fear based thinking. And for most of all, beginning to believe once again in my power to create the life I want, that that isn’t over, and perhaps was even just beginning.

Hopefully yours,

C

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The invisibility of domestic violence ….

I was getting kind of used to being someone you loved

It’s Tree Day and Koenig Family Therapy is getting a facelift, a new front door. I’m sad to let the original one go, but it just didn’t fit right, cold air was coming in, and it wasn’t working. It’s bittersweet, what a metaphor.

I finished the limited Netflix series Maid last night. It was a show I wasn’t going to watch because I’m careful with my psyche and triggers, but as it turned out it’s something I needed to see. It’s so ironic that my initial training was in domestic violence. My first internship was at a shelter, and at that time I was so naive.

I was more caught up in work dramas and my own head to fully capture in my mind the importance of the work we were doing and the great minds I was around. That internship yielded a mistake that would teach me one of my greatest lessons. I was so green at that time. I made a lot of excuses for myself. I remember a supervisor there, not mine, helped point that out to me and coached me through a situation. She told me just to say I made a mistake and not all the reasons I felt I made it.

I took that lesson and kept it and cultivated it. It was a seed that’s still growing and still needs to be nurtured. It helped me learn at that time the significance of being with our mistakes. And if that isn’t what I’m having to do right now.

I’ve told so many stories about what was going on. They matched my ability to tolerate discomfort about myself. It doesn’t leave you much to trust when you know you can lie to yourself to feel better, but that won’t get you very far. Most of this isn’t conscious unless you do the work for it to be.

Sometimes I’m ashamed of the work, it feels heavy and too serious and the bullies of the world would tell me just don’t think so much. I’ve been told that my whole life, but what wasn’t happening was people having the understanding of why I was so serious. They just didn’t get it, so I for sure couldn’t and didn’t. More low self esteem just got internalized. The walls of the shame house got reinforced until I was inside a cel.

My trauma has been a solitary confinement I was longing to be out of, but I’d reinforced my survival mechanisms so much that it felt (it feels) impossible sometimes. Until my therapist reminds me I’m already out of the cel I just don’t have any program for this new life.

Stockholm syndrome is real and so is domestic violence. The worst part about it is that often no one can see the mental prison: I’ve been in a mental prison, for so long, that freedom feels like a heavier burden than captivity. I longed for my captor and my mistake. I longed for rage and contempt and mercurial torture, and then I shamed myself for that too.

In an episode of Maid yesterday which I sat and watched by myself…. you watch her lose herself inside the abuse, and it cried hard. It punched me in the face. It punched me in the gut, it beat me raw with the truth.

When she goes to the shelter again and she just rests for days, and can’t tolerate anything. When she doesn’t remember her favorite color, it slapped me across the face hard. It hurt so much I couldn’t breathe. How she walked away from the healthy person who loved her well and ended up back with her abuser because he’s the one who understood her mother and what she came from. It’s excruciating.

She went back for herself….. I went back for myself. When I stood there that day refusing to give up my ground it was about ME. I didn’t have any relationship with me. I didn’t even have a favorite color. I didn’t know what I liked, It was anything goes.

Everything I set out in the world to do was to not ever choose an abusive relationship. I’d abuse myself first and that’s what I did. I held myself to the fire to become someone worthy, all of these years. I squeezed every drop of me that ever emerged to make sure and stay on task. To make something of myself.

I held myself together for my kids, and every person who has ever judged me for my behavior has never seen what I was trying to do. Holding a River of shame that roared beneath the surface constantly at bay. I’ve been fighting for my life. I was holding back all of these memories that felt like they would kill me. I just tried to get away from them.

I used my whole will to try and make the nightmares stop, to walk away from fucked up love, to leave my mother. And even when I watch something like Maid I feel guilty and bad for leaving abuse. I feel guilty and bad for getting out alive. No matter how sick I got in the situation.

I’ve been fighting for my life. I was fighting for my life when you met me, and in that way I did put my kids first, even though I’ve been consistently called selfish. You have no idea what burdens I’ve been carrying inside. I separated myself from them so I could function all these years, but what I didn’t realize is I couldn’t have a self either.

I’ve been going back into the burning building and collecting her one piece at a time. I’m not a hero, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I am a warrior. And I’ll never give up the fight.

This is an excerpt from my morning pages. It’s been a tear filled morning. “Set the bed on fire…. Teddy. I had a rough wake up. Talked to Jen and didn’t even know how bad I was feeling. What about for the people who have choices as far as domestic violence. I chose to stay. The less visible something is the harder it is to get out. I felt empowered by choosing despite being the target of a rage that dialed right into the stream of shame that always ran just beneath the surface. Think the pink goo from the original Ghostbusters. I kept trying to dam it up, rather than drain it. Hustle for my worthy…. Thinking of Beene. That’s the only love I’ve known, the hustle. A narcissist demands loyalty without actually providing anything except rage and contempt. I cry for the little girl in me that thought that was love. I’m living with the consequences and the growth. I was always going to have to go back for me. I put it off until my kids were 20 and almost 18…. I patched holes in a sinking ship furiously. And now I’m a variety of tired I can’t even describe and a loneliness that’s like I’ve been hollowed out. I creak and rock. My bones call to you from their separate skin. I make myself translucent to let you in…. In the absence of fear, a Jewel lyric, I’ve loved a long time. This doesn’t make me any kind of hero, a warrior maybe, but I sure don’t look like one to all of the people I’ve tried to do love with, and since I could only view myself externally I just internalized more shame.

It has been vicious this pain and abuse. I’ve been fighting for my life. In my own head where I was banished to live…..

Knowledge is power, once someone gets their story clear, healing can happen. This is a cause I can get behind with my whole being. It’s what I do, and as I live out my own story with courage I become more and more capable to do this.

Clarity and Connection has resonated a lot with me this year. Yung Pueblo. It will hopefully be named poetry book of the year.

The fog lifts and I emerge and that’s almost the heaviest burden of all. When the wires are so crossed that possibility feels like a heavier burden than limitations.

Scarcity is a cruel master…. I have to actually learn how to accept abundance. ….

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I am Tired and I am Yours

Party of One

“Sing your sad soul to sleep…..”

I’m still trying to figure this out. I’m trying not to feel ashamed that I’m still trying to figure this out. I had a dream and now I need a new one, and I don’t want a new one I wanted that one.

I’ve been determined for years to get to have the experience of having a baby in my authentic sexuality. And most people can’t understand when I’m on the brink of “freedom” why I’d want anything else to take care of. I don’t think I see it like that at all, and maybe that’s the concerning part.

So I’m processing about what is this baby thing about, when I could do this or that thing. It boils down to I want intimacy and I want to experience that intimacy with a woman I’m on the same plane with. Is that so much to ask.

I’m in so much pain. Last night was one of the lowest I’ve had in a long time. I had a long day, therapy, and then tattoo therapy. I was exhausted and hurty and I just wanted to talk about my day with the same person, one person that I feel I want to tell everything too. Is that so much to ask? Ugh I sound so whiny. No we aren’t doing that.

I’m a whole adult now (as they say) and I will not compromise on what I want and deserve or just automatically reach out to any source that isn’t present in a healthy way for me.

I love who I am and where I am, and I love what I do, how I spend my time most of the time, but I greatly dislike my life right now. I am really fighting against labeling this co dependence, I’m so tired of labels.

I am a love person: why can’t that just be who I am. Because Christina if that were true you wouldn’t attract abuse or chaotic energies into your life and that end up badly. I can still be about love though. So is this about patience. Nail on the head as usual :p. And or about faith. It feels like it doesn’t exist, if I don’t rush and make it happen. The food and the love never came. Except I have all of that in excess, but I do not have a partner.

It’s been almost two years now I’ve cruised through the agony more than once of wishing I was doing Gottman cards and relationship exercises with another person, and all of it. Watching clients discuss their partnerships, even the hard parts with envy. That ship has sailed and I’m still treading water.

I’m so fucking stubborn about certain things. I watched King Richard last night. Such a good movie. Most people don’t like the movies I do. They think they are boring or sad or weird. I’m not in it for the entertainment value. I’m there to experience a real human experienced as recaptured in artistic fashion.

Richard was stubborn and it was insinuated not the best man in certain aspects. Perhaps it’s from a lens of scarcity of not having a father I would have killed to have one dote that attention and affection on me. He wanted something better for his daughters and for his family. And he did it in a way that didn’t compromise their beliefs as a family.

I would have just swallowed the first contract whole without a second thought, just to have the experience. Strong is so attractive to me. And then I thought of who I think of when I think of strong and I realized my wires are crossed there. I had to undo the affection and warmth and reality check myself real quick. I do that a lot these days, and return my focus on me, on my strong.

It’s me who is strong like that, but it never appears that way to anybody else. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? Unseen, unheard, lonely, and sad.

I fucking hate the holidays. I do. I love them when there is healthy love present in my life or at least the illusion of it, but right now I hate them.

Nothing is making me feel better. Granted this is just an emotional wave and it will pass. It’s the lowest of the low.

Last night the crackling fire comforted me: it reminded me of a good aspect of my roots, being from Oregon.

I miss something I haven’t even had yet, a phantom.

Yesterday in therapy I wanted to be excited about my progress, but instead my therapist holds my feet to the fire, and doesn’t let me float off into fantasy. All she did was ask me what I want now that my dream has changed and the tears were hot and immediate and body racking sobbing. I’m so fucking tired of crying. I’m so tired.

My found father will be here soon with a hug and I’ll hold on tight for each moment like that where I can breathe right now. Thursday night dinner… I have an energy healing soon. Moments with a new soul connection in the form of a neighbor.

It all still feels like crumbs and I feel so ungrateful saying that. It’s the pain talking so please don’t shame me, because I’m trying to learn how not to shame myself. For not even knowing what I want anymore.

Taking down a dream is hard, doing it over and over is unbearable, feeling that’s you’re fault and you’re irresponsible and a whole bunch of other things is self-harm.

I curl up in a ball on my couch and beg for a few minutes of distraction that feels like a healthy choice for me and wait for the morning sun to warm this barely beating heart.

For me it was always about love. There are so many kinds of love. I’m experiencing so many including the new baby shoots of loving myself. But right now there’s such an extreme lack of talk, touch, and all those little routines between two people.

I miss intimacy of all varieties. It’s hard to jot slip into being hard on myself here. All of the ways I am responsible I don’t have that in my life. It is always a double edge sword.

I am tired. Three words could have been this entire post….

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Writing is my Discovery, Deep inside are the Richest Wells of Recovery

Isaw a friend’s post this morning about asking for donations for groups that have supported her due to the loss of her spouse. I have known this woman socially on the surface since we were both young, right before each becoming mothers. We shared in common being military wives and living in military housing near each other.

She and her husband shared four children prior to his passing from a military on the job related accident. The organizations she is asking to be recognized as they have received such amazing support as having her mortgage paid off. And many other things and the name for children who have lost a parent to death in the military is a gold star child.

Now I honor her experience. I’ve thought about them and what they must be going through so deeply. What I want to share is how much it makes me recognize the stigmatization of so many other varieties or grief. If you’re valid and someone can validate the loss socially you get support. If the pain is invisible or deemed inappropriate you get judged and can lack support.

It does depend on your choices. Earlier I wrote cast aside and then I didn’t like the victim voice of that. So I am working the re-frame. I use the Karpman Drama Triangle a lot with this. I just feel hurt that my trauma has been invisible for so much of my life and that it’s often felt I’m solely responsible to fix this and fast, but I suppose the reason it’s such a rush is that I rushed, and I rushed because of trauma mechanisms. It truly is a vicious cycle, and then you’re supposed to make tenderness out of this wild beast.

Realistic expectations are something I’m often talking about lately. So hard when you became trapped in a magical thinking phase and used story to soothe and regulate. Those patterns are laid down deeply. I will forever be a firm believer if you want something bad enough and are committed enough and follow through you can achieve it, but you must be flexible to the parts you cannot control, and adjust accordingly.

Acceptance is a dish served cold at the beginning, and one that warms as you go along.

I’m not sure what to do with this conflict about what is worth of support and by whom just yet. I don’t want to be bitter or judge someone else. I just want the same support someone else gets. It’s hard to be with my feelings on this. The things I’ve tried to do to survive have cast me as less valid and certainly less emotionally stable as others. If I don’t acknowledge the latter of those as true I can’t grow. So it’s a must.

Compassion is such a necessary ingredient of recovery and yet how does someone who has scratched and clawed their way through existence with very little support to cultivate that.?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this today. Perhaps it will become a part of my personal mission / branding that I’m working on. I’m not as far away from it as I thought. It’s still The Emotional Alchemist, even in a therapeutic capacity it fits. Now to take the time and consistent effort to continue to foster this development in myself and stay grounded rather than flying into flight mode in a coping mechanism induced flurry.

To be aware of these things now is such a gift. Better than any I’ll find under the tree. Though Santa Christina was pretty good to me this year. I have a lot of room freed up these days and I intend to keep it that way until a worthy investor arises, and by worthy I mean someone as dedicated to “the right things for the right reasons, and primarily consistent awareness coupled with follow through.” The pace is less important than the impact. What a hard earned lesson.

Currently I’m inspired by my son who had made some choices in the stock market that didn’t have the result he wanted. He was fearful awhile I think about embarking again, his loss equalling his tail between his legs. However it’s not that you make mistakes it’s what you do with them. Having the courage to try again. Here he is building back up from the ground. He doesn’t know how much he inspires me.

Speaking of building back from the ground we are trying a new family therapist. The sessions are grueling (well I’ve only had one with all of us but still). Sitting with and seeing the anger or hurt, lack of trust, and being with those feelings, and not doing anything about it except consistent follow through on self work. I think the most grueling part for me is needing to be still and just hold space, what even is that?! Ugh

Watching people in my office make earnest attempts at working on themselves while not being irresponsible with another’s feelings is also inspiring.

You can find inspiration in anything, and it’s most effective when calibrated and applied consistently to your own life.

I am creating. I am creating with the way I’m living right now, with my choices, and I am so very alone. It’s so quiet. I’ve slept on the couch the past few nights, after watching Maid, and again I continue to go back and understand old stuff through this lens. It’s another wave: my bedroom is so lonely sometimes it’s a tomb that houses so many of my dead dreams.

Then there are waves of time when I’m so in alignment with myself that it’s a home of comfort. It’s still so empty and I realize now I don’t want to rush that process. I can wait until I’m ready to fill it with myself and my love. I’m not there yet.

I have a dream still… and it doesn’t have to die, but it may on its own. This is making me think of the movie Serendipity, a movie that years ago helped me leave a relationship that wasn’t for me. I still love the movie. It’s not so much in my present as my past. I believe in it, but not to the exclusion of it being with someone who would be healthy and fair. And right now that someone needs to be me consistently.

My whole life I’ve gotten overwhelmed by trying to fix everything that happened at once. I tried to rush into making a family, and boy do I have lots of hard lessons. Sometimes as a parent I scarcely know what to do.

I find in times when I don’t know what to do, finding what I do know to lean on is helpful. I do know that I’ll never give up striving to do better. In my life currently that includes deep listening and total and utter presence where I am at in the moment, and that all else will sort itself out.

This is my recovery…. This is hard, and it’s gorgeous 💜

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Food is love, and real love sets us free…..

Food is love. Wednesday night and last night my neighbor and her son fed me such nice dinners and we watched movies together. I felt loved and part of a family. I realized that I can have that without being in a relationship with someone. Go figure.

I had a dream last night I was pregnant and it was lucid I felt all the nuances of pregnancy. This isn’t the first dream like this. In this one my water broke and the cramping begun. I swore I’d wake up and have wet the bed it felt so real, thankfully I did not. I never got to hold or see the baby. When life brings you to your knees …..

I’ve always gone hard at everything I do. There was never an in between. But what I wasn’t able to do was see the good in me, this. Last night I saw it in the portrayal of a character in a movie. We watched Freedom Writers. My neighbor’s son’s recommendation. How have I not seen this movie. It’s akin to Dangerous Minds. I have long lurked and noticed it but never committed.

I teared up often during the movie and the fact I was cuddled by dogs and fed such a nice meal. I saw the scarcity, and I saw the abundance of that moment. As I watched them have a banter you only do from a lifetime of affection. Their affection for one another, each knowing the others quirks and flaws and being able to acknowledge and make light of them.

There was no threat. They relayed a story of being at the other son’s for the holiday and a tense moment at the table and immediately I thought that could have been my table. I have been so tense with fear and anxiety and loss and all the things I never had. So full of fear.

This belonging even for an evening made me feel so warm and loved. An older version of me would have been too preoccupied with only achieving one main goal I desire and then emptied and having to start again. The way I am able to appreciate now is priceless.

Her son made a comment about he was glad he could show me something new. And it struck me as interesting how he sees me from saying that. I suppose as someone who is worldly and has lots of knowledge. I only ever peek out from the frightened child’s gaze. Split. I became split from my authentic self when I needed to perform and protect any tender being inside. I kept her on ice, and now as I forgive myself my transgressions and sit with my dark side, I am thawing. This thawing is the product of years of grief and acknowledgment. If you had any idea.

Last night I was thinking of who I am, at my core, the things I’ve always been. I remember reading the star fish story as a child, and how I wanted to read it to everyone and be brave enough to suggest we use it in a work meeting later in life. I was always bullied, called corny, torn down one way or another and I just instantly internalized more shame. I would always rather take it on than anyone else be hurting.

I had a therapist last October or so tell me I am a warrior. I am no man left behind at any cost. That is me. And with the right tools and a person equally as committed to seeing the unseen and understanding it will be a lasting partnership.

I often minimize my accomplishments and self so much that when I’m backed into a corner I try to spew my worth and I’m acutely aware of how I look in that moment without anyones understanding of my scarcity. I needed my own understanding, not just a harsh iron will and drive, moving at warp speed. To be fair I do have a mission, but I never had me on board so I had to keep going back and getting her.

The star fish story is about a man walking on a beach when the tide is going out, he comes across another man picking up all the stranded star fish and tossing them back into the water. The man says what are you doing, this is happening all over on beaches everywhere, you cannot possibly make a difference.

The man picks up a star fish tosses it back into the water, and says to him “made a difference to that one.”

I think of how never enough I’ve been to myself. How I rarely actually acknowledge what I do and that I’m impacting generations through deep individual healing. A ripple in the water. And that I’m dedicated and what I have sacrificed to stay committed to my own work. All while being my harshest critic and immediately taking those hurt by me opinion straight to my heart and halting my own joy and progress in life.

I thought I needed to do more. What I’ve really needed to do is see what I’m doing and who I am now. I thought of the domestic violence survivors I see in my office that begin with shattered minds and selves, so anxious their eyes dart all over during session and they stare off into the distance because they are too ashamed to be seen. I’ve thought of their transformation as they realize what’s happened to them, and that it isn’t their fault, and that there are explanations and tools to heal and help them in their grief.

I’ve watched people afraid of their own shadow, riddled by anxiety, transform right before my very eyes. I’ve watched them stop relying on their own abusive tactics with themselves and their children and start to claim their own right to exist. I’ve watched the rewire and the rise. I’ve watched the sparkle return to their gaze and them hold themselves confidently. I’ve watched them get careers they feel fulfilled in and treat their bodies and minds with a respect they had never known.

I have warriors in my office and it’s the greatest honor. I don’t need to write a book or post videos or be discovered or seen for what I can do. I know the difference it has made in a life. To be seen and understand for what has happened to them and how it impacts their life now.

I was thinking of my authentic self. My capacity to learn and apply what I have and what a gift that is, to be able to lift myself out of my story and my suffering. To have that ability, not everyone can. I was remembering one of the only handful of memories of my mom speaking about who I am. She always said even as a toddler once I was told no, I never did the thing again.

I sit here and think how interesting that is for the person I am today how stubborn and persistent and I realize that was born out of trauma, not being heard or seen. Before that I was extremely responsive and had such a desire to please my loved ones. And as an adult when I returned to that it ended up being used against me in so many ways.

So then I had to return to the adolescent who shouted to be seen and got into fights…. I became at war with myself. When I watched Freedom fighters I realize that war wasn’t started by me and I cry for that little girl. The battles were unyielding and all the time I spent trying to make sense of what happened to me, without any support, in fact the opposite.

The world telling me I was too serious, just relax. Are you kidding me? That was not the answer.

Later after the movie we all talked about passion, and her son said something about it being my real life story, and I didn’t even share anything really. How did he see me? You mean people can see me? I’m always shocked to this day when someone thinks anything good about me. That’s how painful and deeply ingrained abuse is. It doesn’t matter how many people tell you you’re marvelous, if you’re split from yourself it’s the loneliest existence imaginable.

You run around begging and scrambling for a crumb. These days I’m fed whole meals. I got brought flowers on thanksgiving when I spent the day alone, from my found father. These days I cry over a shared meal and an ounce of warmth, being invited in from the cold.

I could never get warm before, nothing worked, and then I got accused of never enough. It wasn’t enough of the right stuff. I didn’t have enough information about my trauma and my needs and wants. I lived to please and love, just to catch a glow, but I couldn’t rest for even two seconds, or it would go away.

Losing it all and myself along with it, has allowed me to rebuild to my specifications, and while it’s a challenge to even identify what those are, my recovery is delicious even when it’s hard.

I can’t wait to watch this movie with my kids and anyone who will watch it with me. Through their stories being seen they transformed. For me that is something to believe in, and now rather than automatically believe in anyone else above me, I am learning to believe in myself.

I was never asking for too much, ever. For food, and love, and belonging. I wasn’t exploitive, I was adaptive. I shamed myself for the things I did to protect my children until I could figure out how to not repeat.

Always

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I didn’t belong to myself….I could never belong with you.

And all she wanted was for someone to deeply understand why she loves comfort sad movies on repeat and music. Not merely to comment, certainly not to criticize, but to truly grasp and understand how that is soothing to her heart. Before you can learn to self soothe you must be soothed from the outside. I stayed trapped there. D

Desperate with that need. I tried to distract from that pain, with everything. People, food, drink, everything, everything and nothing was sustainable until I could sustain this pain in ways that are healthy. I’m not there yet, but I’m on that path. That gives me hope.

When I met my formerly referred to wife I was watching the movie Me Before You and Under the Tuscan Sun quite often. I still like Me Before You so much. It holds me through the storm. I would get so excited about love, but the truth is I didn’t know very much at all about healthy love, and knowledge from the outside wasn’t enough.

It’s the pain that has broken me into being a better human being. And staying the course of not fixing it with anything outside of me. Is that even within a human capacity? So I’d say I’m being hard on myself and try again and again meeting love from the outside, not having it inside. It feels impossible. I’m possible.

Then there are these people that show up and love me so unconditionally for free, not because I do anything. And that is teaching me about real love. The power of sight. It feels like I lost the best part of me is the song lyric on now. I never even got to see the best part of me through anything other than other peoples eyes. The pain is crippling.

Pathologically lonely.

The glue that held me together has been the moments I felt a sense of belonging. I’ve done this in a variety of ways, primarily loving others, and not myself. In that way I didn’t know anything about true love, and how would I. Trying to figure out how to be true love by feeling truly loving, but it could never sustain….I could not sustain it without equal reciprocity and investment, from self and other. Neither was in alignment.

I am hopeful for my future and for my present.

As an adult I stayed trapped as a child. The good aspects of this was childlike enthusiasm and dreaming, the bad is that I’m prone to childlike behaviors. Yin and Yang, light and dark. I am now beginning to hold space for both.

Recovery feels mostly dark, but there’s so much light to be found in the process.

My therapist said to me the other day about a talk she had heard. The gist is that if you were born blind and learned to rely on many devices to do things that might be normal for someone else, and suddenly were restored to sight, would you not use your new sight from then on. Versus relying on what you were used to. I received the message.

I could only love others and want to be loved by them, what I couldn’t do was love myself. And now I’m beginning to…. It’s the beginning, not the end. For that this Thanksgiving day I’m forever grateful.

It’s a tragedy when your motivation for learning what love, is primarily kicked into high gear from not being loved. when your unspoken vows and contract include meeting the needs that were not met so long ago.

Being the one who speaks the unspoken is an unspeakable burden. Thrust into loneliness again. Over and over, stuck in the spin cycle. Dizzy and anxious in an unforgiving prison.

Feeling like the mind is a prison feels an insurmountable chore. You never know when it’s complete and even if you’re moving in the right direction because your mind is constantly berating you with old messages. It’s telling you you’re blind, when you can see perfectly fine. The ultimate gaslight.

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” As excerpted from a recent gift, The Emotionally Abusive Relationship by Beverly Engel. No one ever tells you the ultimate of this is your relationship with yourself. People aren’t even taught to think about this, the most important of all relationships, and by the time this information reaches you most likely your nervous system will be shot to shreds.

Your concentration and spirit so broken it seems irretrievable. I am here to tell you this is another painful lie. Anything that’s lost can be found. But something that’s never been wired in, can that be created. Research suggests mostly no.

Years ago another gift told me I defy gravity and it was true enough and a trusted enough source that I learned to believe it’s possible.

Healing is always possible. It’s hard, but not impossible. This is my personal mission in this lifetime. Heal other, heal thyself.

Not for the faint of heart and I am grateful that of all things I am not that. My skin is worn thin, but I won’t let that stop me. Don’t let your limits hold you back. Push through them because what’s on the other side is quite beautiful. At this point it’s mostly an occasional glimpse, one that I’m never sure is an exhaustion induced apparition.

That’s where faith comes in. This is the one area I’m learning it’s necessary to believe exists from without, and that everything within still always holds a Devine compass that will guide you if you choose not to stay blind.

I’ll stay the course, but I won’t do it blind.

Trust me I need all the help I can get. Most days I can barely breathe. But there is always hope.

Today I am grateful for hope…. And for the privilege of the pain so many share with me that I am able to learn from and the lessons applied are truly transformative.

I am grateful for transformation even when it is one tiny thread at a time. This is going to be one hell of a tapestry. Stay tuned. Stay grounded and grateful, stay loving and courageous.

Stay

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Fools Rush In

I can barely hold my arms up to write this post. On my phone of course, because it’s what I’m used to and I tend to use paths I’m used to for such things. I restarted with a new trainer. My new trainer is lovely, but adjusting to change is hard. Understatement. She and my new self are very supportive so that is what makes the difference.

I’m at my waterfront home. I no longer rely on this excursion for the oxygen in my lungs. I branch out now, but when I visit it’s like coming home. I’ve been making a home inside myself. The walls are no longer bare and the decor is taking shape. I’m becoming visible to myself, from more than being seen by someone else. I could cry. I do cry often.

A song by Trevor Hall came on this morning. Via the Josh Radin radio on Spotify. You can’t rush your healing it’s called and holy moly. Why didn’t anyone tell me that? Christina people have tried to tell you that for years. Not in those exact words. But I couldn’t be told much, that automatically was a slight. My people loved me anyway, and they stay. It was usually me who didn’t stay. I didn’t know how. Now I am staying the course and that discipline will eventually give way to the loyalty that is my core.

Love hard, but don’t take any shit is my motto as of late, and say what you mean and mean what you say. Getting clear on wants and needs and not being all over the place with my communication and choices. That is my recovery and my god it’s one thread at a time. It cannot be rushed. I keep getting slapped in the face by my limitations and my behavior as created by my life.

The truth is I’ve spent my life avoiding myself by trying to fix others: it could be said that I almost didn’t have a choice in the matter until I did. Awareness is everything. It used to be vicious and now moving towards more gentle.

The truth is I always needed to fix myself and to do this I needed support. I tried to force support, manipulate myself and others to get it, tried to emulate….. but I kept ending up back at the beginning with me. So the only option left is to humbly begin building a space inside myself, I can be satisfied with.

At this point in my life this requires a lot of forgiveness and humility.

The ability to recognize everything I projected out is pain that comes from within and my task should I be willing to accept it is to work only on me. Finally alone without becoming panicky and dysregulated. Finally able to meet myself. I need to meet myself where I’m at and stop shouting at anyone else to do anything to help me feel better.

The truth is you don’t get into an abusive relationship typically unless you have also been abusive. They go hand in hand. I’ve been so unkind at certain points in my relationship history. I can trace and know why, but that doesn’t change the impact it had on that person. I know there are people who will always feel the sting of me, more than the love.

All or nothing. Completely selflessly focused on other, crashing and burning into a fiery inferno because this is not sustainable. Being an island is not sustainable. Round and round and round on the ride becoming sick. Now I’m just walking and breathing. Crawling before I walk, walking before I run…..

The long game. It’s a marathon when what I’m used to is living life in sprints. So painful to come to terms with me. Face to face with her until I don’t look away in shame.

I can only forgive myself and do better. I can use what I have learned to be more kind, more gentle, and more loving to everyone and every thing. That is what the pain in my life is doing. It’s changing me. Some things are so difficult to change, but the pains opens my heart to how others feel in my presence. And I look up to 11:11. Moving in the right direction.

I’m going to move there slowly with my wants and needs on board and take responsibility for how I feel and create a stable space to operate from. Come what may I am going to do this.

This morning I am grateful to watch Dexter w my son, to see clients, to drive my daughter to a job she loves that is healthy, and to have peace in my heart. There’s also so much pain, but I won’t let it cloud my ability to have joy for how far I’ve come and how hard I work at being a better person.

I am committed. That is a relief and feels stable and good. You can’t unknow and you can never go back, and in this case that is a relief. It’s been so overwhelming to become so aware of so many damaging things seemingly all at once. It’s less overwhelming if I slow down and just breathe and handle my priorities one at a time and with the appropriate order.

Slow down Christina …. Slow down and just breathe. You don’t have to do anything. I think of how Billy Joel’s song Vienna resonated so deeply almost 10 years ago now when I began this journey into the world of counseling.

Just slow down, be intentional, kind, responsible, dependable and don’t forget you’re lovable and deserve the things you want and need. You always did, and it’s ok now. You’re ok.

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Thread by Thread Cross my Heart…

This is interesting because it’s everything I’ve been trying not to be…. And this reminds me there is magic in it too.

It’s been a morning. Many things have gone unplanned and it has left me some time to lament about how emotional this healing process is.

Today someone I love dearly is putting down his very old dog. She can hardly be called that so we call her doglette. Looked like a man walking a rat on a piece of dental floss lol. I feel for him and the loss for his people. It makes my heart hurt. And that’s a space my heart is used to lately.

I’m sitting here in between an old self and a new and that is when things are seen with the most clarity. My gratitude abides my spirit that is so weary lately. Mostly I spend my time resting. Actual resting not pummeled into an exhaustive pile and then gigantic forced spurts of productivity spurned by the sting that scarcity leaves.

My tattoo itching and healing reminds me of my heart. Is it itchy yet? Are we there yet. I was always so impatient and now I dislike the state of being that way, so that I may know this more mature season of my self.

My neighbor is in pain today and I’m helping with her puppy. I didn’t need to be asked. She isn’t the type to want to, it hurts I can tell (to ask), and I know that all too well. I think of how lonely and hurting I was, last season at this time in my life with a puppy myself and no relief, and what a different human I was then.

I was a human doing and there was no being about it. I was being hard on myself, being filled with agony, being alone and scared. The doing distracts from the being, but that like all the rest is only temporary.

This morning I gave the privilege of taking my daughter to the doctor, helping my neighbor, and seeing clients later. To me living is a privilege and I never was able to see it that way before. So much of my life being in my head has felt a terror filled burden, and I’ve scrambled for a sense of security. It was with me all the time, but we don’t know until the embodiment of lived experience. What a trickster the universe is….

It’s never too late is my mantra as of late. That painful thought has seduced me into so much misery over the years. I always felt behind, not enough, and many other untrue woundings.

My biggest battle right now is with all or nothing. I listened to a Lisa Romano video last night on PTSD on abuse recovery and she said “when you’re having your psychological self chopped up into tiny little pieces by someone who has managed to get into your heart space, this is debilitating.” And I literally burst into tears. Feeling seen. Feeling understood. In the video which I’ll link here she talks about how learning can literally rewire you and how the more powerless we feel at the time of a trauma the more dramatically it affects us. That made so much sense to me. It unlocked a level of forgiveness I have not been able to reach and it opened the flood gates of pain lying on the other side. https://youtu.be/eujm1NARGg8

I’ve been in so much pain. Enough to change my heart and my relationship with myself and others. I’m changing daily. I surrender so much more quickly. Becoming gentle with myself and others. This experience revealed my dark relationship with myself and all of my trauma filled tendencies of operating in the world.

It’s so much to hold space for. 🙁 My nerves are frayed and the acute awareness of my irritability is too much to bare sometimes. This isn’t my natural state, there’s a whole other person inside of here. One that enjoys playing and is creative and has a beautiful imagination.

I just want to be in a safe home with her.

A song is on that keeps repeating I want to love you but I don’t know how…Neptune by Sleeping at Last. Beautiful lyrics. My heart swells, shrinks, expands…. “Thread by thread I come apart, if brokenness is a work of art, surely this must be a masterpiece. I want to tell you but I don’t know how.” This song is unreal.

In the video Lisa talks about how trauma affects our hippocampus and we have a hard time differentiating between the past and now and with context. Trusting our own reality.

Right now I am in a state of acceptance finally. That is truly surrender. Recovery is one step at a time and I need to hold my choices and their outcomes in one hand, and my pain and mistreatment in the other, and to balance it all. Meanwhile keep it simple. Caring for others is a salve. Even if I do have to ask all the time if I’m being co dependent, but it’s not so bad. At least I am aware.

I’m moving from vicious awareness to a gentle protective awareness I will always be able to access, but also not let drive the car of my life. He can be with fear, his twin, in the toddler seats strapped into the back. Love is going to drive now. Fear and awareness can have a sippy cup, a snack, and a nap and then wake up and behave themselves already.

I am making my life a smoother ride for me, and as I do everything else comes into alignment. It’s two steps forward, one back. Breaking and building…..

This is my life right now…..

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A Letter from my 2007 Self Tearing me Open.

It’s time to break the silence. My silence. My stopped up pain. The red ears and head that feels like it will explode from swallowing it all down. Sometimes recovery feels like it will kill me.

I’m seeing a lot of clients right now and I grow as a result, exponentially every single day.

I often can’t capture my many selves or feelings or experiences and that frustrates me. It’s a sneeze that doesn’t come, and it itch I cannot reach. It plagues me really.

The song A Million Dreams is on, from The Greatest Showman. That movie is powerful for me in so many ways. I was that little boy in so many ways, and the older one. Desperate to be seen as good, worth something, enough. All sorts of ideas, but all of that getting away from me, as well as everything I already had.

Whatever that even is because right now I’m just plagued with uncertainty and it’s nearly intolerable. Becoming able to tolerate and to stay with my own experience and develop a self is the necessary component.

Can’t meet my needs outside, uncomfortable in. Anxiety, loss, doubt, scarcity creating a Black Plague that eats possibilities and joy. It’s so painful. Like burning in an eternal hell. Hell is definitely a creation of the mind, a mind trap versus some place you can end up.

The world is on fire…. People are scared and hurting, and no amount of wanting to be a warrior to help can distract me from that being my ultimate deflection of saving myself. I want like heroine to save everyone and everything else, and then need to resist that.

I keep coming across people who tell me so emphatically how good it feels to be around me, they feel they become better around me: what an honor and what a burden. I need a space where I can feel better too, and the consistent message is that needs to be with me.

It’s so hard to say no and not be afraid I’m isolating or depressed or letting someone down or this or that thing. It’s so much work to know myself and it’s so fucking painful in here. Let me out! Can’t I just do what I’m so good at and have that be it? “They learn to be loved for what they do rather than who they are.” Dr. Ramani Don’t you Know Who I Am?!

God it hurts. No wonder we hate change so much. It takes so much less bandwidth to adapt and survive, being mindful to undo this whole process is excruciating and right now there is no relief, because my patterns of that cannot be trusted, and if I cannot trust myself that is an agonizing existence.

So one step at a time we build consistency and security on a new foundation. So many times I lose sight of the architecture and throw my fucking hammer. I want to cry out.

And then there’s that breakthrough moment when I feel like Lady Gaga in A Star is Born where amidst all her self doubt and fear, she discovers herself. Goosebumps. I get a glimpse and then back to the pits of hell for another round of lessons. I’m pretty sure this is what recovery looks and feels like.

I hate it!

Can’t I just go back to not knowing. Life felt better then. But did it? Did it really? If it did I wouldn’t be here now.

We are on to Skylar Grey Everything I need and I got the love vibes.

I’ve been in the bath for hours. Today was a hard one. I got very lost inside myself, in shame spirals and triggers. I had a ptsd episode yesterday driving my daughter and that set off a shame spiral. 🙁 I’m ashamed of my triggers and my coping and so many of my actions. How does anyone actually forgive themselves. I want to lash out, cry, isolate, get into bed, but the world pulls me back out because I am needed.

My coping, but also my co dependence. How do I separate them? I just keep returning to path, truth, and me. But I’m so tired and so lonely some days. Not all, but some I am.

I went to a Coda meeting yesterday. I will be attending regularly and I couldn’t speak. I lost my voice because I was afraid I was going to do it wrong, afraid I’d make others uncomfortable with the breakdown I choked back. In a fucking meeting where that’s supposed to be allowed. I actually sat there and contemplated getting someone else a tissue, and then realized the very act of being there was to get my own tissue and allow my own tears.

Not speaking or expressing emotion made me even more hard on myself. Like a scared wild animal I just wanted to run, but I didn’t. I resolved to do better, strike that, to be kinder to me next meeting and try again to open up. The question staring at me was something about Gods will for me and all I could do was be locked down in my own will is all there is. There is only zuul:p Ugh.! Will I ever feel better consistently? Ever ?! Or rise and falls that are exhausting.

Will it ever be more than circling the drain and getting back up. These episodes of ugly crying break downs. This is such bullshit. Christina you’re just feeling shitty and that’s ok. You’re so much farther than you’re giving yourself credit for. Stop hurting yourself and allowing others to hurt you.

Just stay baby ….. I’m right here. I have your back. We don’t need the story or narrative or shame or anything else to stay removed from emotions because they are no longer not being responded to. You can do this. You’re right here. All the good parts that always were. You’re right here.

We are becoming whole. Just hold on through the pain. ….. just stay.

I forgot to mention I found a letter I wrote to my very first therapist from 2007. At the beginning of my first divorce and school. I broke into so many tears. My heart breaks for that scared lonely girl and is also learning to love her. I’ve been doing this work so long and have never left. That is security. 💜

I’m getting ink this week. I got scared again last time but I’m going to keep going and I’m beginning to fall in love with the process, not worry about the outcome. Trust is such a process for me. It’s slowly coming together. The line work for st X bi plane and the lamppost on a planet. On my upper inner arm.